Lost Relics is one of the most popular and high-quality NFT games right now. It is a dungeon crawler with MMO social features (all gameplay is solo in dungeons for now though) and rare NFT weapon drops that players grind HARD to obtain.
Today's plan is to do runs of one of the new maps. It's a desert themed map. This theme existed before but only at difficulty levels beyond my abilities; now I can actually try it!
The dungeon will help with my current bounty. I must scavenge a bunch of bushes, which takes hours of runs.
New Content Hype
I talked about being tired of the old Relics maps in my previous post, I had run them way too many times. This new update completely rebalances and changes maps, as well as adding several new ones.
My playable Lost Relics content went up by 3 or 4x with this update -- hell yeah!
SO MANY MAPS woop woop
There are now six 1-2 sword difficulty maps, as opposed to having MAYBE three viable dungeons at my current equipment level. That's a lot of new content.
Some Players are Pissed
I've already tried some runs of the new dungeons. They are SPICY. More enemies, more GROUPS of enemies leaving less time to think or react, and more damage across the run.
It is very difficult, or perhaps impossible, to get through certain dungeons without using lots of healing items. Since potions and food can be expensive, this means running certain dungeons is not "profitable" for gold.
Keep in mind the gold is NOT the crypto token -- it's an in-game virtual currency -- so being profitable on gold isn't strictly necessary when grinding a dungeon, you may end up profiting in real money if you get a great NFT drop or you may benefit by leveling up skills to "profit" later in a different situation.
Nonetheless people are pissed... check out the chat from before my dungeon run.
Running Vemmin Desert
Here's my load-out for the desert:
LOADS of potions!! I will not be profitable on this run if I use even half of these, but it's much better safe than sorry. If I die I will lose some really valuable rare virtual items: Mostly, my mining tool which costs 15,000 gold to buy. I don't want to lose it.
ENOUGH CHIT CHAT LETS GO
I love the desert aesthetic. Cliff did a really nice job with the graphics on this one. Graphics are a real strong suit for the game in general, it's nice to look at.
The main goal is to scavenge bushes. This run gives me two bushes before I ever have to fight an enemy. That's just good luck.
There are a bunch of new enemies in the game now, like this weird magic guy with a green glowing book. He's a pain in the ass.
The desert doesn't just have bushes. I am able to mine these deposits. Double resource gathering = more levels and experience on my skills, which is a good thing. I might not need to mine for my immediate bounty quest, but it's still well worth doing.
After a bunch of battling and resource gathering, I make it to the end!! It's always hard to get photos of the crazy moments when enemies swarm me, since the game has no pause button, just trust me it was intense. I've used up a lot of my healing potions, energy potions, and food... but I made it!!
NICE
My Thoughts on the New Update
I am a big fan of this update. The game has so much more content, the aesthetic variety of enemies and level locations is a much needed breath of fresh air.
I do expect and anticipate continued updates to make these enemies more interesting and distinct from each other. They look fun and different, but many enemies do mostly the same things. Even when they are different (i.e. ranged vs melee vs magic), the pacing and counter-strategy for each enemy is quite similar. You're mostly running in circles and looking for an opening to attack.
There are many situations where you end up against a crowd of mobs, just spamming the attack button and a few heals until it's over. These moments are a missed opportunity imo -- the gameplay should be much more specific to the situation, depending on what level it is and which enemies are swarming.
Overall though I think these improvements, along with more varied weapons and skills for the hero, are inevitably coming. This is just early access stuff. The patch added a TON, and I imagine the developer will now refine and improve lots of it.
For me personally, naysayers who suggest relics is DEAD now FOREVER because THE PATCH RUINED IT!!!!! are just being super overdramatic. This update adds a tremendous amount of stuff, I will happily wait for a while and give it time to be balanced.
In the years to come, my standard for balanced and deep gameplay within Lost Relics will go up. I will want the game to be exceptional in more and more ways. For now, I see it as a fantastic start and I personally love this update.
What about you? Have you tried the new Lost Relics update, and if so, what do you think?
